Climate action by China, India to offset Trump

Nov 15, 2017

BONN, Germany (Reuters) — Global warming is likely to be slightly less severe than previously expected thanks to stronger climate policies by China and India that will offset less U.S. action under President Donald Trump, a study showed on Wednesday.

But average world temperatures are still on track to rise far above the key goal set in the 2015 Paris Agreement of limiting warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, it said.

The Carbon Action Tracker (CAT) report, by three independent European research groups, said current policies meant the world was headed for a warming of 3.4 degrees Celsius (6.1 Fahrenheit) by 2100, down from 3.6 degrees (6.5) it predicted a year ago.

“This is the first time since the CAT began tracking action in 2009 that policies at a national level have visibly reduced its end of century temperature estimate,” it said.

China was on track to over-achieve its pledge under the Paris Agreement to peak its carbon emissions by 2030, it said. And India was also making progress to limit a surge in emissions driven by more coal use.

A rise of 3 degrees Celsius (5.4F) in global average temperatures could cause loss of tropical coral reefs, Alpine glaciers, Arctic summer sea ice and perhaps an irreversible melt of Greenland’s ice that would drive up world sea levels, a U.N. science panel says.

Trump, who doubts that climate change is primarily caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions, said in June that he would instead focus on promoting jobs in the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

Bill Hare of Climate Analytics, one of the research groups, told Reuters that it was too early to say that global emissions were peaking.